As he struggles to keep up with frontrunner Mitt Romney and parries calls for him to drop out of the Republican presidential race, Rick Santorum has said in recent weeks that he has actually won more delegates than some media counts show. Those counts, Santorum says, are not taking into account Republican party rules, as well as the state-level meetings that actually determine how many delegates go to each candidate.

"Here's one of the things that I can tell you I didn't know," Santorum told a small group of reporters at a breakfast in Washington Monday. "Every single state is different. Every state. Every single state is different. It's different on how you get on the ballot. It's different on their structure, how they allocate delegates, whether they are bound, whether they are unbound, when they're committed, how long they committed, how they're selected. Our math is actually based on the reality of what's going on in the states."

Now, the Santorum campaign is providing some numbers to flesh out the candidate's claims. In a long conversation Wednesday evening, John Yob, the campaign's national and state convention director, pointed out that many high-profile primaries have been little more than beauty contests, and that delegates in many key states are actually being awarded in county, district, and state conventions, which are often dominated by conservative activists. "In that process, we are doing very well," said Yob. "The moderate candidate almost never performs better than a conservative candidate in a county, district, or state convention process."

Many states are just now starting their conventions, and it is impossible to say precisely how many delegates each candidate will win. The Associated Press delegate count, widely cited in media stories, shows Romney with 568 delegates to Santorum's 273, with Newt Gingrich at 135 and Ron Paul at 50. Yob's count is significantly different: according to his estimate, Romney has 482 delegates to Santorum's 331, with Gingrich at 158 and Paul at 91.

What accounts for the differences? First, the Santorum campaign believes that delegates from Florida and Arizona will ultimately be awarded proportionately, and not as winner-take-all contests. The AP account currently gives Romney all 50 Florida delegates and all 29 Arizona delegates. Santorum and Yob point to a recent article by Morton Blackwell, the longtime conservative activist and member of the Republican National Committee rules committee, suggesting that if the race is close, it is likely the party convention in Tampa this summer will award Florida and Arizona delegates proportionately. Doing so would not be a delegate gusher for Santorum, but it would lower Romney's count, since Romney won both states and now has all the delegates in his column. In the end, Yob believes Romney will end up with 23 delegates in Florida and 14 in Arizona, for a combined loss of 42 delegates.

The second reason the Santorum campaign cites for its more favorable delegate total is party conventions now taking place in Washington State, Missouri, Iowa, and other states. For example, in Washington State, the AP account shows Romney with 30 delegates to five each for Santorum and Ron Paul. After local conventions, Yob says, Santorum believes the delegate division will be roughly equal between the three candidates, about 13-13-14. Again, not a huge increase for Santorum, but a bigger decrease for Romney.

In Missouri, Santorum won the beauty contest primary vote, but state Republicans are now going through the local convention process that will determine actual delegate allocation. The AP delegate count does not include numbers for Missouri, but Yob believes Santorum will eventually come away with more than 28 delegates to Romney's eight, for a net Santorum gain of more than 20 delegates.

In Iowa, Santorum barely won a belated victory in the caucuses after early counts suggested a Romney win. The AP delegate total has Santorum with 14 Iowa delegates to Romney's 12 and Paul's one. "I believe that will change," Yob says. "Santorum will get more, Romney will get less, and Paul will get more."

Adding those changes to changes in other states, Yob argues, means that Romney now has at least 80 fewer delegates than are attributed to him in the AP count. Beyond the Florida and Arizona numbers, Yob says it's all due to the changes between beauty-contest primary results and county, district, and state delegate-selecting conventions. "In every case where the grassroots have a role in electing the delegates," Yob explains, "Paul and Santorum will overperform and Romney will underperform by varying amounts, depending on the state."

Yob cautions that his numbers are projections for the end results of what can be unpredictable state-level processes. "Predicting what will happen on a state convention floor is difficult," he says. But the final result, Yob claims, is that Romney "is on a path to be short of 1,144" -- the number of delegates required to clinch the Republican nomination.

The Romney campaign strongly disputes Santorum's numbers. In a March 22 memo -- sent out after Romney's win in Illinois but before Santorum's victory in Louisiana -- Romney political director Rich Beeson wrote that Romney led Santorum by more than 300 delegates and that Romney already had more than half of the needed 1,144 delegates. "Each day Senator Santorum continues to march up this steep hill of improbability is a day we lose to unite in our effort as Republicans to defeat President Obama," Beeson wrote.

Beeson pointed out that it is impossible for Santorum to reach the 1,144 delegate number himself. Team Santorum doesn't really claim otherwise. But their math is now about keeping Romney short of 1,144 -- and hoping things go their way in state conventions and, ultimately, in Tampa in August.

Yob believes Romney will end up with 23 delegates in Florida and 14 in Arizona, for a combined loss of 42 delegates.

I did the math for Florida, assuming the same proportional rules as Georgia (remember, Florida doesn't have proportional rules). The Georgia rules, adjusted to the Florida 100 delegates, were 25 statewide delegates, split proportionately between candidates getting more than 20%, and then for each congressional delegation, 3 delegates, given to the winner if >50%, otherwise 2 to winner, 1 to 2nd place.

Then we cut them in half because of the early primary (although in any realistic re-working of the delegates, they would give them back their 100 delegates, they have every year).

Romney gets 15 our of the 25 statewide, won 7 districts with 50% for 21 delegates, and 15 other districts for 30 delegates; Gingrich would get 6 delegates for winning 3 districts, and 15 for the other 15 where he came in 2nd.

That gives Romney 69 to 31, which cut in half would be 34 to 16. Santorum gets zero, because he didn't come in 2nd anywhere.

The same thing would be true for Arizona, but I haven't ran the exact numbers.

lol. Well at least we as a country will be in better hands than Romney and Obama with Santorum. Zimmerman will just have to suffer but do all of us have to with the other two in order to save “Zimmerman”? /sorta sarc. Go Santorum anyway. He can’t decide what will happen to Zimmerman anyway.

25
posted on 03/29/2012 7:30:56 PM PDT
by napscoordinator
(A moral principled Christian with character is the frontrunner! Congrats Santorum!)

I don’t know how to answer your question other than to say that I think we are all going to suffer no matter what we do.

Beyond that, I will vote for the GOP nominee without regard to whom it is or my level of distaste for that person. If Santorum gets the nomination, I will vote for him despite what I have said in this thread, because there is no reason I can think of on this earth to allow Obama to have another term.

I already spent my primary vote on Newt here in Fla., so there is no way for me to effect things from this point. I’m just kinda of spewing anger over what Rick said on this Zimmerman matter.

April 3rd is just a few days away: Mitt will win DC and Maryland, both of which are winner-take-all, and will win something like half, maybe a bit more than half the delegates from Wisconsin, which awards some delegates by district and others in proportion to the statewide vote. This will put Mitt at about 650 delegates and Santorum at about 320. Let’s assume Santorum wins Wisconsin, so as to keep hope alive.

Then there’s a lull after which five northeast states vote. One of them is Pennsylvania, in which Santorum would normally have an advantage. Figure another 150 to 160 delegates for Romney, and 70 for Santorum.

I could go on.

All Mitt has to do is keep winning in the blue states, the blue Congressional Districts, getting his share of the delegates awarded in proportion to the vote even if this is less than 50 percent, and keep picking up the super-delegates. To stop this, Santorum has to beat Romney on Romney’s turf. He has not done it, and there’s no reason to think he will.

Contrariwise, Mitt has won only a handful of red states (mostly in the Rocky Mountain west where his Mormonism is an advantage), he has not done well in either the midwest or the south, nor in the rural areas. On the other hand, he is doing well enough to win the nomination.

Mitt will have a real challenge to unite the party, and might not be able to do so completely.

Personally, I think there’s a real chance he will name Newt to be his running mate. I wonder if they talked about this in their no longer secret meeting in New Orleans. Newt could be a very effective Vice President; and, being older, would not be presumed to be the nominee in 2020.

But not Rick Santorum. He’s kind of young. we’d be stuck with him forever. And, he’s kind of embarrassing himself at this point, talking about delegates instead of trying to win Maryland (which is winner take all) as well as Wisconsin (where winning doesn’t mean very much in terms of delegates).

I think we are all going to suffer no matter what we do. Man I agree with you 100 percent on this. We are in deep crap because I think Romney is going to get the nomination regardless of my wishes. And with Obama giving that unbelievable statement to the foreign dignitary who is going to tell Putin is telling . We are in big trouble in a second Obama term. Of course Romney would be 2 percent better than Obama but that is not much. The 2 percent if that he is American and does seem to love America, but comparing him to Obama does not say much.

28
posted on 03/29/2012 7:41:29 PM PDT
by napscoordinator
(A moral principled Christian with character is the frontrunner! Congrats Santorum!)

A Mitt-Newt ticket would be interesting. Santorum can wait...he would be the “next in line”, but I DEFINITELY want Santorum in the Administration if he is going to be President one day. If not, then he should go write books and keep up with his social issues because they are good regardless of what the media says.

30
posted on 03/29/2012 7:44:33 PM PDT
by napscoordinator
(A moral principled Christian with character is the frontrunner! Congrats Santorum!)

Other than not being Obama (which could end up being Romney's only strategy), I can't think of one positive thing about Romney.

Amen to that. Not being Bush is exactly how John Kerry ran against Bush. We know where that got him.

Of course George W Bush cant even come close to how terrible Obama has been as President. I suppose we could consider that but I still don't like the idea of not having any ideas and simply running as the "Not Obama" candidate.

I like ideas. That's why I like Newt. I would vote for Santorum (no problem)if he won the nomination. I do not feel he could win the general election though.

Santorum has very shallow views on issues that are very important to the American people this election cycle. His small goverment ideas would be a plus though.

The Obama machine would crush Santorum. I can see it now. Santorum spending all of his time blaming the Obama machine for his being down in the polls and yelling in an anger-like voice during the debates. It wont be pretty.

On the other hand, there's Romney. Romney's a man who will say anything to get elected. He's the type to be pro-gay in San Francisco speeches and anti-gay in Texas. The man's a democrat running as a republican. Romney is NO different and no more conservative than Mayor Bloomberg. Sad but true.

Newt was the best chance we had.

If we end up with Romney then the 2012 election will be determined by how well or how badly Obama does in the campaigns. There's absolutely nothing positive I could tweet about Romney. No excitement at all for him. I will only be able to support a Romney candidate solely by advocating that others not give Obama another term.

I could not go door to door for Romney. I just do not share his ideals (whatever they are).

Have you examined Rick’s spending record in senate? He never voted for even 1 major spending cut in 12 years. But he voted for hundreds of spending increases. He claims it was all for the team. He will be a disaster with the national debt already north of GDP. We are already heading towards a Greek tragedy at breakneck speed.

The only fiscal conservative left is Newt. Romney is a question mark.

37
posted on 03/29/2012 8:25:58 PM PDT
by entropy12
(Every tax payer now owes $150,000 towards the national debt. We are worse than broke.)

Problem with getting to a brokered convention is that the rules are you can’t be on the first ballot if you haven’t won 5 states. And supposedly any delegates you’ve earned all get unbound if you’re not on the ballot. So only Romney and Santorum will be on the first ballot. With only 2 candidates, one of them HAS to win the majority of the delegates on that first vote. So unless Newt can win 3 more states, there are no other possible candidates that could win beyond Mitt and Rick at the convention.

That is UNLESS they literally need 1,144, not just the majority of voting delegates on the first vote, which could mean some delegates could abstain if they had their heart set on a candidate other than Rick and Mitt. Certainly the Paulbots would do this, unless Romney promised them a Paul as the V.P. He or Santorum could also of course promise Newt as the V.P. and get Newt delegates in their court on the first vote.

38
posted on 03/29/2012 8:26:35 PM PDT
by JediJones
(The Divided States of Obama's Declaration of Dependence: Death, Taxes and the Pursuit of Crappiness)

Santorum should have tried to compete in MD, as it is a closed primary. Maybe he could get old Agnew admirers if any are left, but maybe not. He is from the neighboring states, but I guess ol’ Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulksi discouraged him from trying out there.

39
posted on 03/29/2012 8:46:42 PM PDT
by Theodore R.
(Past is prologue: The American people have again let us down in this election cycle.)

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